Hirakud Dam
| Hirakud Dam | |||||||||
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| Coordinates | 21 ° 31 '51 " N , 83 ° 52' 18" E | ||||||||
| Data on the structure | |||||||||
| Construction time: | 1946-1957 | ||||||||
| Height above foundation level : | 59 m | ||||||||
| Height of the structure crown: | 195.68 m | ||||||||
| Building volume: | 18.1 million m³ earth, 1.07 million m³ concrete | ||||||||
| Crown length: | Main dam: 4800 m, total: 25,000 m | ||||||||
| Power plant output: | 307.50 MW | ||||||||
| Data on the reservoir | |||||||||
| Altitude (at congestion destination ) | 192.02 m | ||||||||
| Water surface | 746 km² | ||||||||
| Storage space | 8100 million m³ | ||||||||
| Catchment area | 83,400 km² | ||||||||
| Design flood : | 42,450 m³ / s | ||||||||
| Particularities: |
Flood wave 1980 |
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The Hirakud Dam is the largest dam in India , measured by the water surface, and a reservoir near the town of Hirakud . It is located on the Mahanadi River in the Sambalpur district in the state of Odisha about 16 km north of the city of Sambalpur . The dam became famous in 1980 due to a catastrophic tidal wave .
Reservoir
The Hirakud Reservoir is used for irrigation, flood protection and electricity generation. It originally held 8.1 billion m³ of water. However, it silted up, so that a follow-up measurement in 1988 only found 7.189 billion m³. The shore length is 640 km. With an area of 746 km², the reservoir was the largest artificial lake in Asia when it was completed, but was overtaken by the Soviet Buchtarma reservoir in 1960 and by the Bratsker reservoir in 1967 .
M. Visvesvaraya was involved in the planning of the dam .
Barrier structure
The barrier structure is a combination of a gravity dam made of concrete and masonry and a dam made of bulk material . The structure was built in 1957, is 59 m high and 4800 m long. There are long connecting dikes on both sides, the left is 9337 m long (in five sections) and the right 10,759 m (in one piece). At the time of its completion, the dam was the longest dam in the world with a total length (including connecting dikes) of 25 km, but this record has now also been broken by Yacyretá in Argentina.
The catastrophe
In September 1980 , this dam caused a catastrophe with a flood with a few hundred to around 1000 deaths. There was no breach of the dam , but due to the flood emergency situation, the dam had to be relieved by opening the locks. The panic emergency relief was necessary because otherwise the dam would have been flooded and a failure of the dam would have caused far greater damage.
See also
- List of the largest dams on earth
- List of the largest reservoirs on earth
- List of dams in the world # India
literature
- Baboo, Balgovind, 1991: Big Dams and the Tribals: The Case of the Hirakud Dam Oustees in Orissa. In: Social Action, 41 (3), pp. 288-303.
Web links
- Hirakud Dam
- Hirakud Dam Project Data
- Operation, Monitoring and Decommissioning of Large Dams in India ( Memento from February 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 650 kB)